They stare at us with blank expressions. I furrow my brow and try to sound out the words again, but they still don’t understand. I really need to stop using this cheap pocket dictionary. Or maybe actually take a class or something?

Lele and Qba look at me with the same pity one shows a dog stuck chasing its own tail. Well, pity and mirth.

The sangthaew is filling up; the drivers repeat to me “50 baht” and I still don’t know if it will take us all the way to our intended destination, Khao Yai.

I ask again- “Khao Yai?” and they nod once again without a word. My
internet sleuthing had told me we could find transport for 30 baht; this sangthaew is only 20 baht more, but...it’s the principle of the thing, right?

“We can ask around some more,” I offer to Lele and Qba. They smile and continue on with me. Vero, Uri and Martina are sitting with our backpacks, exhausted- as we all are- after another long night and stiff train ride to this somewhat random city. As we walk up and down the row of vehicles, a three-person dragon goes door to door alongside us, accompanied by a small traditional Chinese back-up band; every shop owner tosses money into the dragon mouth for good fortune (it seems Chinese New Year never ends here).

“Khao yai!” We turn around to see a wide-smiled man in a tan baseball cap. He nods and repeats “Khao Yai!” Still a bit incredulous, Lele asks “You take us to Khao Yai?”

“Khao Yai!” He claps his hands this time, one hand ascending diagonally to the sky. His exuberance is oddly convincing, so we laugh and give in. He charges us 30 baht, so it seems my internet sleuthing has won the day again.

Twenty minutes later he pulls up to a guest house that is definitely not a national park entrance and gets out of the truck. We look at each other; he says “Khao Yai!” one more time and then disappears inside the guest house. Whelp...

We walk in and are greeted by a surprised woman at the front desk; turns out we are 7 kilometers away from the park, and our confident driver either supposed we were lost guests or took us for easy marks. Our only option was the same sangthaew we had turned down earlier.

I had turned down earlier.

I spend the next half hour apologizing as we wait by the side of the road. They don’t care, of course, because they are all full of easygoing love. Even on the side of a hot dusty Thai road.

A sangthaew is a basically a large pick-up truck retro-fitted with a metallic covered seating area in back; the one that picks us up is nearly full, so I once again end up hanging on for dear life on the back steps. My penance.

It drops us off at the park entrance, still kilometers away from the visitor center; but once we pay our entrance fee, we have no trouble hitching a ride inside. Thai people are almost universally kind and helpful to foreigners, especially outside the crazy tourist hives. A couple men in a large SUV invite us aboard and fill us in on exactly what we’ve just entered. Khao Yai means “Big Mountain” in Thai, which I suppose explains the excitement in our accidental driver earlier.

This is one of the oldest and largest national parks in all of Thailand, at a confluence of different biomes- mountains, tropical evergreen jungles, deciduous forests, open grasslands- that support abundant wildlife, and one mammal in particular I longed to see in the wild: elephants.

As it would turn out, nothing could prepare us for the wildlife encounters to come.

When we arrive at the visitor center, we find ourselves outnumbered by sambar deer, large and steady creatures that are completely untroubled by our close presence. My travel family is not quite as thrilled as I am, slack-jawed and wide-eyed at wild deer all around me. Are they wild? I can’t even tell.

Qba and Uri finish our booking for the night- two tents and sleeping bags for the six of us at a campground further inside the park- and we pile into a beat-up sedan with a park ranger.

Or...we attempt to pile in, but I end up the odd man out. It’s ok, I insist; I honestly feel like I would rather walk at the moment. This is probably a mixture of regret for my earlier misjudgement along with an innate passion for nature...and a thinly-repressed independent streak that often lashes out in sudden, hard turns. They seem concerned, which only increases the love I feel for them; sometimes, I just need a little walk to release and re-balance. So I wave them on and begin a personal trek to the campsite.

Which is...where? I didn’t exactly get a map or actually hear where the campsite was. Surely if I just follow the road, I’ll be safe, right?

The forested passageway gradually thins out to rolling grassland and then to mixed woodland; the only sounds I hear are of singing birds and wind-blown trees.

A neon yellow flower falls from above and lands at my feet; I pause for a spell and wait for another to dislodge, and then another. Soft plops on asphalt.

Late-afternoon sun glows behind the flowering tree; a little further down the road I find a large pond and watch dozens of swift flycatchers skim the surface in shifts, a watery banquet table for their dinner. It doesn’t matter what has passed, or what is yet to come- this moment calms my turbulence, feeds my soul.

I serenely drift along the camber of the road, carefree-
And freeze.

A tall elephant steps on to the road not 15 meters in front of me.

Fear and wonder hold me paralyzed. I can’t even blink. She is so close I can trace the folds of her leathery skin, read the expression on her face.

Her walk across the road is but a couple of strides, yet few feats have ever appeared as majestic as this. Golden sunlight drapes itself like a robe on her haunches.

Only after the pachyderm clears the road do I see a line of jeeps and trucks on the other side- tourists with their guides, all safe and sound in the confines of their vehicles. I begin to think I may not be in the safest position, a fear that is only heightened when I feel a rumble- an almost unearthly sound, like a pervasive bass that needs no amp. I look to my right, and see another elephant camouflaged by tall grass...and staring right at me.

He is smaller than his herd-mate, but closer, and by the way his ears are flapped out he doesn’t look quite so happy to see me.

Someone from a jeep up ahead shouts out “Red! Bad color!” I look down to see my crimson-colored Oklahoma shirt, and privately curse my school colors for the first and only moment in my life. It might be time to- slowly- back away a bit.

After a couple of judicious steps the tension eases, and I submit once again to awe. I don’t know how many times I’ve admired them from behind a fence or window pane, but to be on foot with only air and vegetation between us...I feel I can see wary intelligence behind their eyes, that I can hear grace in the way they move their 3-ton frame through the forest.

More elephants emerge, 7 in all. They take their sweet time traversing the road, walking at their own unhurried pace. Masters of their own fate- at least as long as this national park is maintained and kept free of poachers.

I wait for them to each disappear into the brush before I begin to remember who I am or what I am doing. Did this really just happen? I’m not sure my disbelief will wear off.

The sun is setting, however, and I still have to get to an unknown campground and rejoin my own herd. Fortunately, a Thai family stops to let me jump in the back of their pick-up truck and join two fellow backpackers headed the same direction, young German women who tell me they chose the location of their first trip by literally spinning a globe and pointing to a random spot- this one, Thailand. I’m a little jealous of their decision-making process.

I find my dear family as the sun finally slips behind distant treetops, another abundant day fulfilled.

I can’t sleep through the night, though; the jungle nocturne is simply too irresistible. I step outside the tent and walk down to riverside to hear the concert: a shifting series of solo voices give way to one another, featured above perpetual invertebrate background choir.

The black of night feels empty yet full, with a large and diverse cast concealed beyond my vision. Nevertheless, the scene is one of calm, even when a large monitor swims through the water next to me. I nod off for a while right here, strangely soothed by these portentous surroundings.

The next morning we dive right into the forest for what we flippantly presume to be a casual trek- and quickly learn the age-old lesson of jungle treks: nothing is ever as it seems on paper (or phone screen). We spend most of the day unsure if we are on an actual human trail or just a random wildlife path- or no path at all; we turn around multiple times, make at least one completely accidental circle, hack through some bambooed brush, and senselessly check the batty GPS on my iPhone every 10 or 15 minutes to see if it looks like we are
headed towards our intended destination, the visitor center.

In the late morning, we stop and rest on some boulders at the foot of a skinny waterfall; I try to straddle the fall to get a fancy shot with my phone camera and, of course, fall right in- phone lifted above my head the whole time, as I’m not a total fail today. My sweaty body is far too refreshed by cool water for me to feel any shame, and we all get some much-needed laughter at my expense.

For as lost and unprepared as we are, we are still in a vast tropical forest on the other side of the world, with new wonders anywhere we truly look. It is dry season here, yet flowers still bloom and great banyan trees carpet the space above our heads. We marvel at each massive spidery trunk along the way, humbled by alien-like enormity.

Hours blur into each other, as indiscernible as the various trails we are possibly following; even without direct sunlight, the humidity causes us to all slowly melt minute by minute. When we happen upon a fortuitous suspended tree vine near another waterfall, we all take turns swinging out into receptive, open water.

Adrenaline and soaking euphoria drive us the last kilometer to our destination, which, uh, turns out to not be the visitor center. It is another campground, thousands of meters from where we thought we were headed.

No matter, though- there is a pavilion, a cook, and bottled water here, not to mention a troop of macaques digging through trashcans. This is all we need to be happy.

The cook whips up 6 dishes of food from his wok right in front of us; there is no menu, only whatever he happens to be making at the moment, with or without a fried egg on top. I do not know what it is- some kind of meat and rice combo with chilies mixed in- but it is the best meal I’ve ever eaten.

Sure, that is hyperbole brought on by circumstance, tired and famished and mid-adventure, but sentimentality always plays a role when it comes to food, no?

When we are each fully satiated and untroubled, lounged in cheap chairs, we watch the scavenging macaques and marvel at how surreal it is to see wild animals use their paw-hands with such dexterity. To this point in life I have only been in the wild with four-legged mammals that invariably must use snouts for most of their work; to see these monkeys so effortlessly manipulate chip bags and other human items feels almost chilling in its implications.

Little do we know that at this very moment another troop of macaques is rummaging through the girls tent back at our campsite, having easily manipulated the zipper for their raid.

After the gang shares a smoke, we head back onto the trail a little less lost and a little more sated. It is a nice, lazy post-meal walk, the steps taking on pleasant monotony. We are awarded a rare, limited vista on a cliff and spend a time basking like lizards. Full and happy, we feel like masters of the jungle, with a dozen kilometers behind us to attest to our greatness.

We descend the trail cheerily, with me in front- I’m an experienced trekker, you know. I once scaled the highest peak in Maine in less than 2-
-a very loud, very angry buzz interrupts my aggrandizement.
We instinctively bolt forwards- right into a bee swarm.

One of the girls screams, or maybe all of them. I turn back to see them dancing and tearing off tank-tops...oh no. I check my own body, but there are no bees; somehow, Uri and Qba have not been attacked, either. Only the girls. And not just a few stings- bees crawled under their clothing and left numerous small welts across sensitive torsos and thighs.

It looks and and sounds incredibly painful- but I don’t think it appears life- threatening. Right? They say they’re not allergic, just pissed off. I’m still juiced by the fight-or-flight energy and feel at fault for their pain- I was first in line and have some weird alpha male guilt issues- so I vow to run ahead to the visitor center and see if I can get anything that would help.

I take off before we can think any of it through- what tangible help could I even hope to find? Whatever. Now I’m trying to discern the trail while dodging tree roots and vines in a full on sprint, hyper-aware of any buzzing sounds. As chaotic as it is, I oddly feel...comfortable? Like I belong in this moment, a wild animal swiftly moving through the forest on a personal mission. Like this is a wavelength of activity and danger I can thrive in.

Are my senses heightened? Or is this just the adrenaline? A bird calls out overhead, and I suddenly screech to a stop-
A large black animal looms over the trail ahead. For a split-second- and then it is off running itself, as fast as it can get away from me. Is that...a black bear?

I guess there are Asian black bears here? I laugh out loud maniacally, just another strange creature in the middle of the jungle.